Bringing Prevention To The Classroom: An Introduction

Providing effective substance abuse prevention education to your students goes far beyond just teaching then the facts about drugs. Effective substance abuse prevention education involves teaching your students about themselves, what their possibilities are today and what the possibilities of the future are.

How you teach your students about substance abuse prevention may be more important than what you teach them. You will have many students in your classes that will not be taught about the dangers of alcohol, tobacco, and other drug use from their parents, leaving you to fill in the void. You can help your students learn the facts about drugs, correcting the misperceptions that your students may hold from misinformation provided by their friends and the media.

Teachers of youth in grades 6-8 have special challenges when bringing drug prevention programs related to the short and long-term consequences of drug use into their classrooms because their students are risk takers. They have become intrigued by what use to scare them. The best way to present information to them is through a focus on how drugs affect the human body and mind, human relationships, and their environment. At this age, they can see the benefits and costs of education and behavior choices. They are watching adults and learning from how they see us behave, not from what we say.

Using the Nebraska Alcohol and Drug Information Clearinghouse's Prevlink web site as a resource to present accurate drug information and prevention messages to youth through numerous school subjects within the school's curricula is a great way to do this.

Key prevention messages include:

• Young people can make good decisions.
• Staying drug free has positive benefits for every part of your life.
• Using alcohol, tobacco, and other illicit drugs has negative physical, mental and social consequences.
• Friendships are extremely important to helping youth choose their paths in life.
• Most of their peers do not use drugs.

The Teachers' section of "The Right Stuff" campaign will continue to grow as a resource for teachers and parents. Please remember that this is a campaign, not a drug prevention curriculum.

As youth search for their identity, adult supervision and guidance is critical! Parents and teachers need to model the healthy, responsible behaviors they expect of the children or students in their lives.

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